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employers want to bring more people in. If we didn't, people in the STEM fields could demand more money.
We should have H1B Visas for lawyers and politicians. It would be amazing how quickly the program would be shut down then.

Microsoft has an ulterior motive to cell their OS powered phones now. I haven't used on but apparently they are quite good. This might be a teaser to companies-- "hey, you can't use Blackberry anymore. Iphones are nice-- but you can't do work on them. Look at our new Windows phones!"

it integrates so well with my TV. It controls my cable box, Blue ray player, stereo, etc.... Until all content is streamed-- this is the perfect box to have. The Boxee, Apple TV, and Roku are all stand alone. This is Google's real advantage-- you can migrate over.

Typically they just issue new shares and dilute current shares; while giving management and investors a number to keep their percentages the same. This is a far more insidious way to screw over the little guy that the old way.

Private islands on the internet? Isn't that what we have now? I pay for a subscription to the WSJ and there is content and comments in there reserved for subscribers. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
If my traffic was being shaped so I cannot access the islands I want-- different story. I would switch ISPs in a heartbeat if they did this.
I don't really trust the big ISPs, but I trust the government even less. You can bet your boots that any net neutrality bill would have loads of other provisions in there that we don't want.

Yes-- but being a lay person we can look at past predictions made by scientists in various fields and point out their mistakes. Climate scientists have made predictions in the IPCC report for 1990-2010. 1990-2000; they were very accurate. Their predictions for 2000-2010 were horribly inaccurate.

I follow the same philosophy with astrology. I know nothing about star and planet alignment, but I am qualified to call them bunk.

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

Amen. It is selfish but we are supposed to take care of ourselves- it is our primary responsibility.

This bill will increase demand but does NOTHING to address the supply side issue.

If you really want health care costs to plummet; allow 100 medical schools to open up. In 8 years we will have doctors clamoring for business and dropping prices with each other to compete; and we can then abolish Medicare/Medicaid because prices will be cheap.

Unfortunately, AMA has congress by the balls so this sort of true reform will never happen.

The product I use is called Homeseer (in OP) and it does much of what you say. It uses a 900 Mhz wireless protocol mesh network called Zwave which communicates to various devices. It is supported by multiple manufacturers. I have light switches, thermostats, motion sensor, light sensors, temp sensors, appliance modules, door locks, and door sensors that all run Zwave. Big names like Trane and Schlage support it. In addition there are other sensors (water sensors, humidity sensors) you can get. Zigbee sort of hasn't caught much traction. You can buy zwave products at lowes.

It runs on Windows; which some say is a minus-- but doesn't bother me.

There is a slick iphone interface cause HSTouch which allows you to create your own screens for control (works on Windows/Linux/CE and Mac too I believe).

When I get home- I pull out my iPhone and unlock my doors; turn on the light and the heat.

Zwave is still growing; and I imagine integration into these products is forthcoming. The beauty of zwave over wifi is that it comes little power; so battery operated devices are plausible. Throughput it 9600 -> 40 kbps.

To add devices; I just bring my zwave usb stick to a device; click a button on each; and it adds. The network self optimizes.